E3 2000: Hands on with Power Stone 2

Share.

Already out in Japan, the U.S. version is well underway. Click here to see how it is coming along.

By IGN Staff

Having been something of a fan of the original Power Stone, I was very much looking forward to trying my hand at Capcom's much-touted sequel, now featuring 4 player play. Power Stone 2 features all of the detailed, colorful graphics of the original, with the same humorously exaggerated feel (I just love seeing characters flattened by a huge hammer) and almost-like-handdrawn-but-in-3D visual style. Of course, with 4 characters onscreen, the action is a lot more hectic, and the camera typically stays further out than in the original.

The first thing that struck me upon seeing Power Stone 2 in action was the new stages. The interactivity and multilevel aspects that were so cool in the original game have been brought to a whole new level, with huge areas that change drastically as they go. In each of the 5 stages, you'll progress from one area to another, often under rather extreme conditions; one stage has you fighting initially on an airship, which is eventually destroyed, leading to a battle during free fall for a while, and eventually being continued as a more traditional fight on the ground below. Other such moments include running away from a rapidly spreading fire, swimming between submarines while they move back and forth through arctic waters, climbing up a bunch of unstable platforms, and running from a huge rolling boulder.

The amount of interactivity in the stages is also insane. Aside from the items/weapons from the original Power Stone, there are teleporters, tanks, cannon turrets, and, in the area where you're running from the boulder, skateboards. There are now enough power stones for two characters to be powered up at once, although I noticed that on the whole, they seem to be de-emphasized in comparison with the original game; between the larger stages, and the increased number of brutal toys to play with, one can easily get by hardly paying any attention to them at all. Another more minor change to the power stone system is that the super attacks that automatically ended your powered up time in the original now simply take away a large chunk of the power bar, but will not necessarily cause you to immediately revert back to normal.

The game was fun to play, and I was pleased to see options to have only two fighters, and also to fight in two on two teams. It was also nice that the life bars were on the huge side, as it led to some pretty involved battles, and also made it easier to see everything going on in each stage. That said, it certainly had some problems that detracted from the play. It was incredibly hectic, and somewhat tricky to keep track of the action, although with a bit of getting used to, it wasn't too hard to stay on top of everything happening, especially given some practice with the original game (which pretty much required keeping an eye on your opponent, the power stones, and all the items strewn around the stage). A bigger problem was that attacks were very hard to aim, and it seemed to force you to aim at the nearest opponent, regardless of what direction you face. The AI also left something to be desired, particularly in how it made use of gun turrets and the like. Lastly, when you fall off a platform, or get too far behind the shift in scenery, you'll simply reappear in an appropriate place, which diminishes the sense of urgency and undermines some of the stage design by allowing you to pay less attention to that aspect of the game. Overall, I'm still looking forward to it for its two player game and as a party game, but I couldn't help being disappointed with it; it just seemed to have more flaws in the play mechanics than the original.